


Before The Time of Angels

by PlotDotOh (TheCheerfulPornographer), radial_symmetry



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Adventure, Afghanistan, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Circular Causality, Crossover, M/M, Retirement, Science Fiction, Time Loop, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-08
Updated: 2011-12-14
Packaged: 2017-10-25 20:33:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/274497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCheerfulPornographer/pseuds/PlotDotOh, https://archiveofourown.org/users/radial_symmetry/pseuds/radial_symmetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson has a run-in with a weeping angel, and gets sent 33 years into the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Way It Ends

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Dr. Who crossover without any Doctor in it. Well, maybe. Well...
> 
> If you don't know what a weeping angel is, this might not make a lot of sense. You can check [here](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Weeping_Angel) for the basic rundown of facts.
> 
> Apologies in advance to Steven Moffatt, for the liberties I'm about to take with the Weeping Angels mythos.

**Now**

John's lungs burn as if they're on fire, and the cold mountain air isn't helping anything. But at least he seems to have slipped his pursuers, finally. This area is honeycombed with caves and piles of rock; he ducks into one and huddles down, making himself as still and small as possible, listening for footsteps. Listening for any sound.

All that he can hear is the whistling of the wind as it winds its way around the rocks. Dusk has fallen, and far in the east the first stars are coming out, bright and almost painfully sharp. For a second John imagines that the land itself is singing to him. Yes, if this part of Afghanistan could sing it would sound something like that, all high and wailing and thin, three reedy notes in a dissonant chord. Life barely hanging on amongst the cliffs and rocks. The voice of the desert, crying out...

John shakes his head. This is not the time for whimsy or sentiment. He still feels lightheaded, almost dizzy from running for his life, running for what felt like hours in full body armor, with a heavy pack. He doesn't know how far he's come, doesn't know exactly where he is now.

Doesn't know where any of his squadron-mates are, either. They'd all taken off together when the ambush struck, but then John foolishly stopped to kneel at Dominic's side, frantically checking his vital signs. He'd still been alive, but only just, and John knew that there was nothing he could do. He heard William shouting his name angrily, shouting at him to get his arse up and run, and not be such a bloody idiot.

Then he looked up and saw the Taliban fighters racing towards him. He cursed and stumbled off to the side, narrowly avoiding a volley of rifle shots. He tried to take cover, several of them followed, and he ran. And ran, and ran, and ended up cut off from the rest of the group, and now John is lost in potentially hostile land.

Which is brilliant, just wonderful.

Well, he could be dead, or worse. And of course he has his GPS around his arm, so it's not like he won't be able to find the base, provided he can continue to evade the hostile force.

He knows better than to hope for rescue. The never-ending Afghan War isn't going so well that the Coalition forces can afford to waste resources on non-strategic goals, like rescuing a single soldier who's foolishly managed to get himself lost. Even if he is a capable and highly-regarded Medical Support Officer.

After he catches his breath, John takes a few careful swallows of water, not allowing himself to indulge his thirst too much. He doesn't remember seeing any water source, although he wasn't really focused on the task; so he has no idea how long his supplies will have to last. He decides to wait a bit longer before radioing base, just in case his pursuers are still lurking about.

While he waits, John studies what he can see of the landscape around him, part of his mind automatically analyzing it for escape routes, points of cover, and high ground. Luckily for him the moon is full tonight, and the area is bathed in pale white light.

As he examines the view, the hollows and outcrops of stone that he originally took to be natural suddenly form themselves into squares and cubes. Architecture. There, that's clearly a wall and the edge of a roof, and are those columns? John frowns. Some kind of ruins, perhaps?

Well, it's entirely possible. Bamyan province was an ancient center of trade along the silk road, and remnants of that culture can still be found. Many of them are undocumented, and lie abandoned to the wind and sand. John had thought that most of them lay further north, but this could easily be one such remnant. Lucky for him, too, since the fallen rocks and half-crumbled walls provide many excellent places to hide.

John thinks he sees a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye, and instantly jumps to full alert, his eyes scanning the area, looking for anything out of place. But there is nothing moving now amongst the piles of grey rock, no flash of color or light. Nothing out of place.

After a moment, he relaxes. It must have been the wind kicking up dust, moving gravel.

Then it happens again.

John Watson would _swear_ to the fact that he saw movement this time, a sharp blur of it catching his peripheral vision, far too much to be an errant leaf or rock. No, this was a _form_ , and a fairly large one at that. He could swear that it had been the size and shape of a tall man. But when he watches, squinting and holding his breath, willing himself perfectly ready and still... once again, there is nothing. No movement, no sound. Except...

What is that, some kind of statue? Odd that he didn't notice it before. It's fairly far away, and he doesn't want to risk reaching for his binoculars to get a better look just yet, but the grey shape has sharp lines and a humanoid outline. It's obviously more than just a pile of rock. The silhouette widens and lifts out at the shoulders, in a way that is almost suggestive of wings.

John frowns. He didn't think that the ancient cultures of this area had any winged deities or spirits, but he's certainly no expert. For all he knows, it could be simply art, a sculpture carved a thousand years ago to adorn some merchant's house.

Weird, though, that it has stayed intact, while the buildings around it crumbled into dust. It appears, so far as he can tell under the washed-out moonlight, to be made of the same grey stone as the surrounding walls and ruins. But perhaps that's an illusion; maybe it is carved out of some much stronger stuff, thus surviving the elements for centuries. John is possessed by the sudden urge to go over and find out.

For a second, he allows himself to be distracted by idle fantasies of making a great archaeological find, and selling the statue to the British Museum for a large sum of cash. Which is nonsense, of course; even if the Coalition would spare the resources to bring the statue out, which is ludicrous on the face of it, it would then belong to the current government of Afghanistan. Which of course is just as incompetent and corrupt as the previous five incarnations had been.

They would probably set it up on the lawn of the new President's Mansion in Kandahar, and let the pigeons cover it with shit. (He tries hard not to stretch that thought into a larger metaphor.)

Some subconscious timer in John's brain ticks over, and informs him that he's been looking for 5 minutes straight. No sign of movement. He allows himself to relax a little more, and risks looking down to dig around in his belt pouch, seeking binoculars. He wants to get a better look at that statue, see if he can make out more details of its form.

Before he has time to get the zipper fully open, John Watson feels a searing pain in his left shoulder. It's worse than anything he's ever felt before, worse than when he broke his arm as a child, worse even than that time a napalm bullet grazed his thigh. It steals away his breath, and robs his mind of thought. His shoulder burns as if stabbed with a white hot poker, and at the same time freezes as if submerged in liquid nitrogen.

He has time to notice only a snarling face, with eyes of a cold and featureless grey. Then John Watson screams, and the world falls away.


	2. The Way It Starts Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John is displaced and confused. He meets someone who might be able to help.

**Then**

John opens his eyes to flat fluorescent light, and quickly closes them again. He is lying on a soft surface. A bed? He shifts experimentally. Yes, it must be a bed.

His arms and legs seem to be free, and he is able to move them about. Not a prisoner, then. Has he been found? Did the Army somehow come to the rescue, bring him back to Base?

The lights are the wrong color, though. They're too white; the solar lamps they use on base have a more yellowish hue. And the way sounds echo around him speak of solid walls and tile floors, not the sound-muffling and bullet-blocking panels that make up most of Base. No, he must be somewhere else.

The unmistakeable sound of machinery hums around him, a comforting background noise that speaks of civilization and resources. He couldn't have been out long enough to have been brought back to London, could he?

He's already categorizing the bullet, and trying to calculate the angle of the shot. Even if his injury was life-threatening, it can't have been beyond the capabilities of their central hospital, with all of the modern equipment that it possed. He's seen the hospital reattach limbs, and bring men back who've been shot in the head.

Why would he have been sent back?

A faint beeping enters his consciousness, and he is curious enough about the source to brave reopening his eyes. He cracks them slightly, letting the pupils adjust to the harsh light. After a minute he looks over, and finds that he is hooked up to a machine, a clunky and archaic sort of heart monitor. The beeping follows the beat of his heart.

Not London, then. No hospital in the developed world would still be using equipment so old. He must still be in Afghanistan, but not at a Coalition base. And not a prisoner.

That seems to rule out all of the possibilities.

Somewhere else in the developing world, then? But why... It just doesn't make sense.

Just then, a Caucasian woman enters the room. She moves like a nurse. John can always identify a nurse; there's something universal about that cheerful, harried manner that they all seem to pick up during training.

It's unlikely that the Taliban would employ a female, Caucasian nurse, so that firmly rules out one set of possibilities.

But neither is she wearing an Army uniform, nor any sort of insignia. Even the most marginal Coalition forces, like the South Sudanese or the Ossetians, all have proper uniforms.

In fact, her clothing is oddly cut, and her shoes and hair remind John of something from his mother's photos. A hospital seems like a strange place to make a fashion statement. Once again, the facts don't add up.

A further wrench is thrown when the woman greets him in a perfect London accent. "Hello there! Good to see you up and about."

He cocks his head to the side. "Hi. Can you tell me where I am."

She looks at him appraisingly. "St. Bart's Hospital."

"In London?"

"Of course." Her look has shifted to one of more concern. "Do you remember your name?"

"Of course. Captain John Watson, RAMC."

"Oh!" She seems oddly relieved. "Well, that's just wonderful. Do you know your service number?"

He reels it off automatically, then stops. "Wait a second. Why do you ask? Didn't they tell you when I was sent back?"

Another emotion flashes through her eyes. This one almost looks like pity. "No, John. Who do you mean by 'they', in this case? Do you have family here in London that we can contact?"

John is taken back. "Wait, wait. So I wasn't sent here by the Army? I've been in Afghanistan, the Army must have sent me back. Arranged for transport..." He trails off.

The nurse's expression changes once again. "Afghanistan. I see." She nods, as if though something has become clear.

"Well, John..." She pats him on his right shoulder, the undamaged one, and he tries hard not to flinch. "We'll look up your service number and hopefully that will tell us more." She pauses. "Just to be clear, you don't remember how you got here?"

He shakes his head. "Can you tell me? Please?" John hates the pleading note that creeps into his voice. He's just so confused... None of this makes any sense.

"Certainly." She flips through his chart. "You were found unconscious on Carleton Street by a member of the Metropolitan Police. Your left shoulder appears to have been stabbed, but not by a flat blade – the shape of the wound indicates a weapon that was curved or round. There were no signs of struggle, nor of any other person's presence at the scene, so the police assumed that you were stabbed somewhere else, and came to that location afterwards."

She looks back up, and gives him a sympathetic glance. He can't help but notice that, despite the retro hair and outfit, she is rather attractive. Under better circumstances, he might have given it a shot.

"Honestly, John, we were hoping that you could tell us the rest. All we knew up to now was that you didn't match any missing persons report, nor the description of any wanted criminal." He shakes his head, completely at a loss.

"Don't worry, Mr. Watson. Amnesia is a common response to certain kinds of trauma. But now that you're awake, we'll get you sorted out."

Amnesia? He supposes it must be so. How else could he explain this circumstance...

John intentionally calls to mind the last thing he can remember. Night in the mountains of Bamyan Province. The ambush, hiding in the ruins. Looking at a statue. Getting shot, or apparently, stabbed. Something about a snarling face with fangs, but he must have misremembered that. No doubt it was the face of his attacker, and his brain exaggerated its features in the dim light.

What was the date? Ah yes, Sept. 14th. At least he can find out the extent of his memory loss.

The nurse is about to leave; he calls her back. "Pardon, ma'am. Can you tell me today's date?"

"Of course! It's the 25th of July."

Wait, what? He says, "Come again?"

She looks at him with patience. "It's July 25th, two thousand and ten."

"I'm sorry... My hearing must be damaged. I thought you just said it was 2010." He laughs awkwardly.

"Yes, that's right." A hint of impatience creeps into her voice, but she keeps it well-disguised. "July 25th, 2010."

"Is this a joke? Or, oh, it must be a cognitive test. I know the sort. Don't worry, I haven't lost my memory _that_ badly."

"I know that I was shot... or stabbed, whatever... on Sept. 14th, 2043."

He looks at the nurse expectantly, waiting for her to laugh and tell him the real date.

 

******

 

In the end, they have to sedate him, very much against John's will. He won't deny that he's gotten a bit upset, but it's perfectly understandable in the face of their patently ridiculous lies.

John Watson may be wounded, but his mind is perfectly fine. He knows that he was born on July 7th, 2013, and shot in Afghanistan in 2043, at the age of 30. As he tumbles back into unconsciousness, he clings to that fact.

It's 2043, and he's thirty years old. Anything else is just impossible.

 

******

 

The next time he regains consciousness, he hears voices murmuring quietly next to his bed. The first voice sounds familiar; he places it as the nurse with whom he'd talked before. The other one is unfamiliar. It's another woman's voice, low and quietly confident.

He keeps his eyes shut, and listens in.

"... just came back," the nurse is saying. "They ran the service number that he gave, and it doesn't exist. In fact, it's impossible: the number isn't even in the right format. Way too many digits. And his ID doesn't look like an Army ID, either."

"I see. Any sign that he might be dangerous?"

"Well..." the nurse hesitates, and John feels vaguely guilty. He'd put up a good struggle when they went to stick him with an actual needle, rather than using a proper jet injector.

"He became upset and resistant when he regained consciousness. Kept insisting that it was 2043, and wouldn't believe anyone who told him otherwise. I assume you're here to oversee the transfer to psych?"

"Possibly. I want to review the facts of his case, though. It's never a good idea to rush a diagnosis, especially where something tricky like amnesia is involved. I've seen people wake up as a blank slate, and later make a full recovery."

"Of course, Doctor. Well, take all the time you need. I'll be around." John follows the footsteps as the nurse walks out the door, while the doctor takes a step closer to his bed.

"I know that you're awake, John." He jumps guiltily, and his eyes fly open wide. Standing beside his bed is an attractive black woman with a no-nonsense demeanor, wearing a white lab coat — one garment that has been the same for centuries.

Once again, John spares a moment to regret his poor health. At a better moment, he would be putting the charm on for this one, no doubt about it.

"Hello, Mr. Watson. I'm Dr. Martha Jones."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't just a Sherlock AU; it's also AU to Dr. Who canon, in ways that will become clear later on. I'm just saying, keep it in mind.


	3. John Learns the Facts

"Weeping.... angels? Like, _angel_ angels? Haloes, white robes, little harp sort of angels? You've got to be joking."

Dr. Jones takes his reaction remarkably well. In fact, she's taken _all_ of his reactions remarkably well, including John's insistence that he's from, well, the future. She has a sort of air of unflappable calm about her, as if she's seen shit that's _way_ crazier than anything John could say or do. John is envious of that calm; he's feeling pretty flapped, himself.

Yesterday when he told Dr. Jones his tale, she'd frowned and then begun to ask him for details about the medical technology that he worked with, and the various wound therapies and treatments in which he was qualified. His detailed and honest responses to those questions, more than anything else, seemed to convince her that he was telling the truth.

After that, she'd excused herself, saying that he needed to rest. She told him that there was a consultant she wanted to call in, someone who 'specialized in exactly this sort of thing'.

This morning she came back, and now pacing excitedly at her side is a whip-thin man with odd, spiky hair and thick glasses, incongruously dressed in a gigantic coat and sporting brightly-colored trainers that don't match the rest of his outfit. (John instantly thinks of them as clown shoes, and just as quickly tries to cut off the thought. The man is here to help him; it doesn't matter how eccentric he is, just as long as he knows what he's about.)

Dr. Jones gives him a calm and patient smile and opens her mouth to speak, when the other man cuts her off.

"Wellllllll..." He draws out the ell sound obnoxiously long, rolling it around on his tongue as if he's licking a popsicle. John stops himself from rolling his eyes. In the last hour, he's already learned what that sound portends. And sure enough, the floodgates open.

"Not actually that sort. Well, sort of, but no. I mean, think about it; you have angelfish, right? And they're fish who are just _called_ angels. And then there's angel food cake, which isn't made of angels, which is good because that would be totally disgusting, and of course there's a flower called Angel's Trumpet, and angel dust, that's some kind of drug..."

Dr. Jones clears her throat. "What the Doctor is trying to say" — she always calls him that, just the Doctor, no last name — "is that 'weeping angel' is just our name for a species. A race of beings. To your eyes, and mine, they look basically like a statue of an angel with its hands over its eyes. But that's not..." She waves her hands a bit. "It's just the form they take."

"Quantum locking." The man cuts in. "Brilliant defense mechanism, really. They can only move when you're not looking at them." He rocks back and forth on his feet, as if he can't stay still for even two minutes.

"So, hang on. Let me get this straight. What you two are saying is that I was attacked by some kind of... of predator, like an animal, except the attack sent me backwards in time?"

"Yes!" The man practically crows. "And it's _fascinating_ , because, you see, this is now the earliest reported Weeping Angel attack! The first one I knew of before took place in the 23rd century, and that's almost 200 years from now. This completely negates the Karmollian Hypothesis, which in turn implies that that whole origin theory is rubbish..."

John is confused. Worse, he's starting to get used to that, to accept it as something that will apparently be a fact of his life for the foreseeable future.

Dr. Jones gives him a sympathetic look, as if she knows what's going through his mind. "Your situation isn't going to be easy, John. Believe me, I understand. I've been stuck in similar situations before where I was... in the wrong time. It will take some adjustment, to say the very least."

"But remember this: you're not alone."

Something in her expression, or the way she softens on that last word, makes John wonder what happened to her. Whether there was a time when she had been left alone, in... what did she say? The wrong time?

"Hang on, what exactly do you mean by 'the wrong time'?"

"John Watson." It's the man again, and he enunciates John's full name with somewhat disturbing relish. "Do you accept now that it's 2011, and that you've actually travelled backwards in time?"

"I... I guess so. Yes." He feels like he has to, despite the fact that every corner of his mind screams in protest.

It makes no sense, none of it makes any bloody _sense_ , except... Except that it does. Except that it matches all of the evidence. The only alternative is that this is all some sort of bizarre experiment in brainwashing being inflicted upon him by his own government. Which, really, makes even less sense than John somehow being sent backward in time.

So, alright. He'll take it as a working hypothesis, at least. "Yes, I do."

The thin man nods. "Good, good. Well, you're not the only one who's traveled in time."

"Wait, so you mean to say... That you have? Both of you?"

"Time-travelers, yup." He emphasizes the "p" with a relish that makes John want to punch him, just a little bit. Perhaps he might have found it charming, at another time.

"Martha and I, we've been around the universe and back. Not anymore, not together, of course. Our Martha's moved on, she's busy helping people, saving lives. Dr. Martha Jones, that's her." He looks proud. John doesn't really care why.

"But wait, so you still... you still time-travel? Like, you yourself, freely and at will, have the ability to somehow skip around in time?"

Dr. Jones smirks a little. "I don't know about freely and at will. The " — she says some word that John doesn't recognize, sounds a little like 'tar dish', but that doesn't make sense. Unless it's a nickname of some sort? — "tends to go... astray, frequently."

"Don't talk that way about the tar dish." (Yes, it definitely sounds like he said 'tar dish'.) "She's perfect." The man glares at her, and pouts.

"But you do it? You actually travel in time?"

"Every day!" He grins, one of the widest and biggest smiles that John has ever seen on anyone. That smile goes a long way towards making John like him. "Well, not _every_ day. Actually, it's more like..."

John cuts him off. He doesn't have time to listen to another round of babble. "Good. So you can take me back, then, back to my proper time. To 2043."

The man's face changes instantly, as if someone's flipped a switch. The smile is gone, and he looks very stern and solemn, almost grim.

"I'm afraid I can't do that."

John does, in fact, try to punch him then.

 

************

 

 _I almost punched an alien. Good God, I just tried to punch a 900-year-old alien. Christ, and I thought things couldn't get any weirder..._

Lucky for the alien, John is weak and disoriented still, and he basically tripped over his own feet and went down before he even got within swinging distance. (And a little voice in John's head keeps pointing that actually, no, it's lucky for _you_ , because you don't get to 900 years old without being a pretty tough bastard with some tricks up your sleeve, even if the skinny bloke doesn't look it, and now he's babbling to himself. Oh God, is it contagious?)

To make things worse, Dr. Jones — Martha — caught him and held him back, and John had just enough time to feel that she's surprisingly strong, stronger than he'd expect a civilian to be, before she manhandled him back onto the bed. Then the two of them both stood over him, frowning and staring at each other, partaking in some serious nonverbal communication. Eventually something seemed to be decided or agreed, because the man turned and left, without another word to John.

Now Dr. Jones is trying to Explain. He feels that the word deserves that capital letter, due to the topics she's covering — 900-year-old aliens, thousands of races of sentient beings, a vessel called a TARDIS (not a tar dish, there's no 'h') that moves about in time and space, and oh yeah, apparently some things just really can't be changed.

And John isn't stupid, he's an educated man, he's studied his share of physics and cosmology. Beyond that, he's been exposed to a fair amount of sci-fi, being an avid watcher of Inspector Spacetime in his youth, and one or two of the knockoff series too. So he _does_ have a passing acquaintance with some of the concepts around time travel and the hazards thereof.

Maybe that's why he finds it ultimately possible to accept that the man — the Doctor, as he likes to be called, and John wonders how exactly he qualifies for _that_ — genuinely cannot take him back. Apparently, returning him to his own timeline would cause untold damage to the space-time continuum, or something like that. John really doesn't want to be responsible for the end of the world, so he decides that he'll just have to buck up and accept the fact.

It's not as if there's anyone back home to miss him, at least.

Some of the melancholy sparked by that thought must show up in John's eyes, because Martha stops trying to explain the universe, and turns the conversation toward topics a little closer to home. "So yeah, like I was saying before you decided to turn violent" — she shoots him a look, and he has the grace to blush — "it's not going to be easy for you to adapt. We'll help you, though, the Doctor and I."

"We both have a decent amount of connections. I'm well enough known in the medical world, and the Doctor knows lots of people in government. Between us, we should be able to get you away without any trouble, and get your paperwork sorted out. Heaven knows it won't be the first time we've had to fabricate someone a new life from scratch. "

"I'm thinking, start with the truth, keep the Army and Afghanistan part. You were shot in the shoulder, invalided out." _Oh, that's right,_ he remembers with a start. Right now, it's the early days of the _previous_ Afghan war. There are British soldiers over there fighting, right where he was... will be. Funny how they keep going back to the same spot.

"We can get you a bit of money to get started with, too, although eventually you'll have to get a job." She looks at him appraisingly. "I think I can get your medical credentials sorted out well enough for you to practice, but I'll need to assure myself that you can work with our equipment, first. There are things you'll be used to that we simply don't have, and there may be older techniques you need to learn. We can work on that when you're feeling better, though."

"Most urgently, I think we need to find you a place to live. At this point, I'm judging that the less time you spend in this hospital, the better; it's a dangerous environment until we get you more acclimated."

"It appears that your wound is healing just as well as could be expected. Although from your perspective, it's probably taking a ridiculously long time, without some of those muscle regeneration treatments you were telling me about." She laughs a little, awkwardly. A touch of professional envy, perhaps.

"Anyway I think we can have you out of here in two days, but you'll need some place to go after that. And I don't think you should be alone, not at first. I'll ask around, see if I can't find anyone who's looking to share a flat."

She pats his shoulder, trying to be comforting. Her bedside manner is excellent, but John somehow is not reassured.

Dr. Jones must have a terribly busy life, John knows her type — and if what she says is true, the Doctor is off traveling about most of the time, battling space monsters and God knows what. They might be able to help him out with logistics and material things, but it's not as if they'll be able to be _friends_. Not really.

Despite what Martha said, John Watson knows that he is alone. He feels more alone right now than he's ever felt, out of a whole lifetime full of alone.

Almost everyone he knows doesn't even exist, and those few who do are infants. If there was just one person he could talk to, one person he could trust to _listen_ about all of this and not think he's crazy... That would help. That would go a damned long way to help.

John frowns at himself and mentally squares his shoulders, ordering himself to chin up and carry on. He's been through tough times before, and he doesn't need much to survive. He'll get by somehow, just like he always does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Turns out I lied about there being no Doctor. Cheeky bastard decided to show up after all.
> 
> Also, this episode has some of the Dr. Who AU-ness that I warned about. Sally Sparrow never happened, in this universe.
> 
> I keep changing the name of this fic. Sorry 'bout that. I think I'm finally good with it now.
> 
> Finally: [Inspector Spacetime](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMSyIgydYfs)!


	4. Life In Linear

"And time continues in a linear fashion, for quite awhile after that."

John pushes the laptop closed without bothering to hit Post, and lays his head down on the desk. He is sick of this room, sick of his own company, and he is strung out and jumpy from lack of sleep. To add injury to insult, his leg has begun to ache, since he can no longer have his nightly sessions with a muscle regenerator.

In this barbaric age, John is reduced to walking with a cane.

"That has to be the worst closing sentence in the history of writing", he says aloud, into the empty room. "Right up there with 'They all lived happy ever after', and 'Amen'."

First of all, the verb tenses are fucked, but mainly it's that some things should go without saying. John strongly feels that the linear progression of time, from past to future, is one of those things.

Except now John can't stop thinking about the explanation the Doctor gave, before he fucked off into his TARDIS and flew away. About time being — he can't remember the Doctor's exact words, and is pretty sure they didn't make sense anyway, but the gist of what he'd seemed to say was that time is... squishy. That it can get squeezed and shaped and turned back on itself, or even tied in knots. Even broken, perhaps, although John doesn't really want to think about that.

Ever since the Doctor's explanation, John has had nightmares on one recurring theme. In these dreams, the world that John lives in is only a thin shell, stretching across a terrible empty void that is bigger than anything the human mind can hold. And sometimes that shell cracks. Sometimes people fall in and disappear, and sometimes... things from the other side come out.

John considers the mornings he has woken up trembling, covered in sweat and gasping for breath, his lungs burning and limbs shaking like he'd run a marathon.

He decides he doesn't feel too bad about his concepts of time needing some extra reinforcement, after all of that. But the verb tenses are still fucked, and he never does end up publishing that draft.

 

****************

 

"Of course, John. You're perfectly psychologically healthy, aside from the fact that you genuinely believe you're from the future." Ella is frustrated, and John is even worse.

Once again he curses the one condition of his discharge that Martha hadn't been able to bend. ("I _did_ bend it, John", she'd sighed. "I got you assigned to the best therapist I know. She's still going to think you're crazy, of course, but there's really nothing else that we can do. You'll just have to ride it out.")

It's only 6 more times, after today. John has kept a running countdown since the first time. Six more visits, six more times sitting in this uncomfortable chair and getting his head poked at by Ella, and he can be done with this charade.

He amuses himself in the meantime by being honest with Ella, and watching as it confounds her over and over again. He knows enough psychiatry to know that he doesn't exhibit any of the typical signs of psychotic or dissociative disorders. Aside from the fact that he thinks he's from the future, of course.

He's sure she's quite an able therapist, most of the time; Martha's recommendation, such as it is, carries weight. He would feel bad for messing with her, except that everything he tells her is perfectly true. _Let someone else be as confused as I am._

It would be funny, except for how it's not.

John doesn't linger after today's consultation. Martha is waiting for him at St. Bart's; she says there's someone she wants him to meet. Apparently one of her colleagues is looking to share a flat.

Why she thinks this mysterious friend would be capable of putting up with John, he doesn't know.

He doesn't have high hopes for this meeting, but he trudges along the sidewalk anyway, cursing his leg. After all, he owes Martha Jones a lot.

 

****************

 

"So what is Dr. Holmes' specialty?" John asks, as they are walking down the long corridor to the lab.

He hopes it's an area he knows something about. Maybe having some basic interests in common will help him connect with this stranger. Help hide the current shortcomings in John's social skills.

"Oh, he's not actually a doctor here," Martha replies. "He just uses our labs. I'm not exactly sure how he talked them into letting him do that, as a matter of fact. Maybe he got his hands on some psychic paper, somehow."

John looks over, confused, and she shoots him a grin. He doesn't ask.

"In fact, I know him in sort of a roundabout way," Martha continues. "His brother Mycroft works in government, and the Doctor and I went to visit him once." She pauses. "I don't actually know what they talked about, I stayed outside. Anyways, that's when I met Sherlock. We had a fascinating conversation about different types of radiation poisoning."

"Radiation poisoning," John repeats, for lack of anything better to say. "So, wait, he's not a doctor _here_ , at Barts? Or he's not a doctor, full stop?"

"Full stop."

"What, a scientist then? Or some kind of technician?"

"Well..." Martha sounds almost like the Doctor for a minute, drawing the word out long. "Not exactly. But we're here; see for yourself."

As they go into the old-fashioned lab, John doesn't know what to expect. Obviously this Sherlock Holmes will be smart, scientific, technical. Someone who would find radiation poisoning fascinating is likely to be absorbed in his work.

He has a somewhat generic image in his mind of an average-looking man in a lab coat, perhaps with glasses. (A lot of people have glasses, here in the past.)

He definitely isn't expecting _that_.

 

****************

Later on, after decisions and arrangements have been made and the day's events are starting to blur together in John's mind, he finds himself riding with Sherlock in a cab. For some reason, he's following the man to a crime scene.

John feels overwhelmed, almost like he's been bumped around in time again, except this time he landed in an alternate universe where he has a flat-share with a brilliant (and rather attractive) man who seems to be some kind of private detective. Perhaps it's this lingering disorientation that makes him do it, or perhaps it's just curiosity.

Ever since they met, Sherlock's been staring at John's watch. He's been staring at it while trying to hide that fact, and John has absolutely no idea why. So he takes a breath, and asks him.

"Your watch?" Sherlock looks up at him, and frown. "Yes. May I see it?" John obligingly taps the little catch that releases the strap, and hands it over.

Sherlock turns it all around in his hands, examining the face, the back, the band, the clasp. He taps it with a fingernail and holds it up to his ear, and even sniffs at the back. (John can't imagine what he thinks he's going to learn from that.) Eventually, he pulls out a little plastic pocket magnifier from somewhere in his coat, and begins going over it inch by inch, his frown growing greater all the while.

Finally, he closes the little pocket magnifier with a snap, and announces, "Your watch is impossible."

"Beg pardon?" John is interested. He can't deny that. "Why do you say that?"

"I'm familiar with every brand of men's watches, and every major model within each brand," his new flatmate announces with great precision. (John gets the feeling that he says most things with great precision, whether they actually deserve it or not.) "This watch wasn't made by any of them."

"Now, that would be interesting in its own right, but the watch could still be custom made, a one-off. What's more fascinating is that it's clearly not."

John shifts, curious despite himself. He knows the answer to Sherlock's dilemma, of course: the well-known company that manufactures his standard Army-issue wrist unit won't exist for another decade or two. But John has to wonder how close Sherlock can get to the real facts.

Martha hasn't given him any instructions on this, regarding what he should or shouldn't tell Sherlock. Or, more accurately, what John shouldn't allow him to find out.

John decides to encourage the line of questioning, for now.

"How do you know the watch isn't custom?" he asks.

"Well, the phrasing of your question would have confirmed it, if it wasn't already obvious before that."

"Look, the band is scuffed and worn right here, in a pattern that indicates extensive and fairly rough use over a long period of time. Furthermore," he digs his fingernail into the pocket formed by the stitching around the clasp, and holds it out. When John squints, he can see a faint line of reddish-brown dust. "It's been worn outside, and hasn't been cleaned in quite some time. Possibly never. Finally, there are three small scratches on the face" — he points them out to John — "which could easily have been buffed out, but they were not."

"Given the state of your clothing, as well as the fact that you were seeking a flatmate, you're obviously not a wealthy man."

John considers protesting the remark about his clothes, but ultimately has to accede the point. He really has no idea what's considered fashionable right now, and has simply gone out and bought things that are comfortable and cheap.

"If someone of your economic class possessed a custom-made watch, it would likely be the most expensive thing he owned, and I would expect him to treat it with appropriate care. And certainly not to wear it outside while doing manual work" — he squints at the dust on his fingernail again — "in an arid, mountainous landscape."

"Which, incidentally, helps to answer my earlier question regarding Afghanistan or Iraq."

John realizes that his mouth is hanging open, and moves to close it.

"Wow. That was amazing!"

"You think so?" Sherlock tips his head to the side, and gives John a strange, careful look.

John wonders what Sherlock can read on his face. Does the future wear different lines into one's skin? Is he covered in the dust of decades not yet passed?

Useless whimsy. John pushes the thought away.

"Of course I think so."

Sherlock seems as if he's on the verge of a smile, but the expression disappears as quickly as it came. (John finds himself really wanting to see Sherlock smile. He doesn't quite understand why, but somehow he knows that it would be just brilliant.)

"So it's not custom, and I don't recognize the brand."

John realizes that he is holding himself very still and quiet, that the soldier part of him is on lookout, waiting to hear what Sherlock will say next. He doesn't totally understand why, but if he were a civilian, right now his entire body would be tense.

 _Please_ , he thinks, and he doesn't really know what he's asking for. Doesn't know whether it would be better or worse for Sherlock to guess the truth.

If he does, John will have to try to lie to this brilliant man, or risk looking insane. If he doesn't... well.

If he doesn't, he won't know.

If John were a civilian, he would probably also flinch when Sherlock turns those narrow, pale eyes on him, the expression so focused and intent. "You were introduced to me by Dr. Martha Jones, who doesn't usually work at St. Bart's."

Wait, she doesn't?

"I previously met Dr. Jones outside the offices of my brother Mycroft, where he was meeting with a friend of hers, the so-called Doctor."

His stare gets even more intense, and how is that even possible? John feels like his face might be about to catch on fire.

"The Doctor is a known alien, and his meetings with Mycroft usually involve dealing with the aftermath of alien contact," Sherlock announces. "Yet to all appearances, you seem fully human."

Without warning, Sherlock touches the back of his hand to John's neck, then runs it carefully through John's hair, and finally grabs his wrist to take his pulse. John's face at this point has passed "burning" and is rapidly heading towards "five-alarm blaze", and oh my goodness is the man's touch distracting.

"If it's an illusion, it's quite a convincing one, even to the senses of taste, smell, and touch."

Wait, taste?

"I know of no alien species that has that capability," Sherlock continues. "Nonetheless, it is certainly theoretically possible."

He leans back in the seat with a satisfied look. "Conclusion: you're either an alien, or you've had extensive contact with them. Either way, the watch is alien technology, which is why I couldn't identify it."

"Oh."

For a second, John wonders whether he should let it go. Let Sherlock believe that his conclusion is true. (He may also consider, in the back of his mind, whether being an alien would enable him to take part in more experiments like _that_. Like the kind Sherlock conducted a moment ago.)

But then he remembers eyeballs in the microwave, and something about a riding crop in the morgue, and decides that might not be such a good idea.

He doesn't know the man, after all. Doesn't trust Sherlock's experiments to stay the acceptable sort. (The _pleasant_ sort, his mind whispers, before he tells it to shut up.)

In John's state of distraction, words slip out.

"No, actually, I'm afraid that's not quite right. The watch isn't alien, it's standard-issue Army. It's just that I'm from the future, that's all."

Sherlock lets out a little huff, and turns his face toward the window. Hiding his expression from John. "Well. I always miss something."

 

****************

Later, the two of them run through London, chasing cabs and dodging cars, and John forgets all about his aching leg.

Later, John saves Sherlock's life and then Sherlock saves his in return, and eventually they decide that there's no point in keeping track.

Later they get takeout and watch TV, and Sherlock misuses the flat and abuses his violin, which makes John grump and grouch. But he never, ever wishes to be anywhere else, because when John told Sherlock that he was from the future, Sherlock's only reaction was to be annoyed. At himself. For missing a deduction.

Later, John meets Mycroft Holmes, who whisks him away to a parking garage to ask several pointed questions about the future, all of which John refuses to answer. Afterwards he consults with Martha Jones, and she reassures him that he did the right thing.

Later Martha works with John for several weeks, during which time Sherlock pouts ferociously. John wonders how Dr. Jones has so much access at St. Bart's if she doesn't work there, but he never asks. And eventually Martha signs off on his medical license and he gets a job, and mostly he forgets about the tools that are missing and the useful medicines that haven't been yet been found.

There's a pool and a bomb and a hospital stay, but this time John knows what year it is when he wakes up, and there's someone waiting to wheel him to the cab when he gets out.

One day, shortly before the day of John's birth, he gets a thick packet of paper in the mail. It contains a long list of places and dates and people that he must avoid at all costs, in order to keep the space-time continuum intact. He tries to call Martha Jones to ask her about that, only to be told that she isn't there, and no one knows exactly where she's gone.

He regrets never having asked her out to dinner.

Later still, there is a kiss, and then there's kissing, and then many more kisses after that. And John decides the whole thing is brilliant, really, and eventually there comes a day when he realizes that he hasn't thought about the future in weeks. That he's happier than he's been since the 20's — since he was just a kid.

And time continues in a linear fashion, for quite awhile after that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't be fooled; the end of this chapter isn't the end. There's still one major chunk of plot.


	5. 2:37 am

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's 2:37 am, and something is wrong.

**Later**

John ascends from a dream, from something that would be a nightmare in another man's mind. He is drowning in sand, being swallowed by it; he is sinking beneath the surface of a moonlit mountain peak. He is turning into dust, he is crumbling away, he is being worn down by years of wind and rain, his features sanded smooth. He is becoming something other than a man.

It is not a nightmare, as much as it should be. The pressure of the sand, the million billion grains all pressing against his eyes, against his lips, against his chest and arms and thighs... John finds it comforting. He tries to cling to the sand, his fingers stretched out into claws. It fades away. There is nothing solid for him to grasp, nothing to cling onto, nothing to counteract the pull — whatever sound, whatever slight motion in the waking world above, that drags him inexorably to the surface.

His eyes fly open, and turn toward the little glowing bedside clock.

It's 2:37 am.

He does not allow himself to indulge in a groan, or even a disappointed huff. In truth, this time of late night/early morning is not unfamiliar. It hasn't been for a long time, really.

But for a long time, 2:37 am saw him running about the streets of London, chasing down the perpetrator of some latest crime. Or keeping company with Sherlock while he burrowed into the minutiae of a case, cross-filing and connecting, faster than any software. Always faster than any computer, any profiling system, no matter how advanced. For 28 years they'd beaten Moore's Law, and it had been uniformly glorious and grand. Bigger than any thing John ever thought he'd be a part of, bigger than the Second Afghan War, bigger even than traveling back through time.

His time as John Watson: doctor, sidekick, hugely popular writer of true-crime, Sherlock's Boswell, Sherlock's... partner and friend. Or simply _Sherlock's_ , better said. His time as _Sherlock's_ had long since eclipsed the soldier John Watson, the John Watson of 2043. He's left that man far behind.

Now, as they approach that year again — it will be 2043 in 342 days, his mind supplies — that man, the Other John, over in Afghanistan, is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

Because these days, he sees 2:37 am while lying awake in bed, his mouth stuffed with cotton and his brain lined with fuzz, limbs impossibly heavy and difficult to move. These days, he sees 2:37 am because he sleeps all day, off and on, just drifting, and then when night falls he lies awake. Lies awake, and stays perfectly still.

At first they'd thought it was a thyroid problem, and then a vitamin deficiency, and then a sleeping disorder. He's even submitted to psychotherapy.

When he and Sherlock retired four years ago, to this little historical farmhouse in Sussex, he had plenty of energy still. Old wounds had certainly taken their toll, on both him and Sherlock — years of physical stress and abuse, lacerations and wounds, broken bones and sprains and cracked ribs and more than a couple near-death close calls, had caused both of their bodies to stiffen and slow. Nowadays even long sessions in a muscle regenerator (and God, how he'd welcomed _that_ invention when it came along again) couldn't restore the full range of motion and strength.

And so, they couldn't chase criminals through the streets of London anymore, couldn't leap from rooftop to rooftop like shooting stars, like superheroes, high above the streets. Couldn't risk taking another gunshot wound, another near miss, another graze from a knife that might or might not be poisoned with chemicals or anthrax or H3B9 influenza, these days.

They couldn't do the things they used to do, not anymore.

But so what? The average lifespan of a healthy, first-world male was 94 years, and they still had each other even if the work had changed. When they retired, John was 57 and Sherlock was a sprightly 55. They had years and years of time remaining, to do research and write and enjoy each other's company, to explore the world, to invent. To play the violin, to grow carrots and cabbage and kale, to walk along the cliffs, to walk beside the sea. To watch the sunset. To watch each other change, knowing that amongst all of this change, there was a constant and that constant was them.

They had plenty of time. Above all else, they had time.

Then, just within this past year, John had begun growing more and more fatigued. He'd developed dizziness, and shortness of breath, and he could no longer walk beside the sea, could no longer pull weeds from their garden plot without having to sit down, right there the dirt. He often fell asleep before the sunset, nowadays, and then he would wake up in the middle of the night and just lie there for hours, feeling no desire to move.

He so rarely felt any desire to move.

At first they'd thought it was a thyroid problem, but the tests and scans had all come back negative. And so had the tests after that, and the tests after that, and the tests after that. Even with the medical technology of 2042, they just can't figure him out.

The current diagnosis is some kind of vague "metabolic issues" label. When pressed, Dr. Hawthorne had readily admitted that it was like nothing she had ever seen before. (John likes Dr. Hawthorne. She has a no-nonsense air, but is also patient and kind when necessary. And she respects his medical background by explaining things in detail, using technical language, holding nothing back. She reminds John of another doctor, that beautiful woman who saved him and mentored him and gave him Sherlock, so many years ago.)

John wishes he could just tell them the truth.

He doesn't think he was ever meant to live past 2043. As the date of his first death (that's what John calls it now) approaches, John grows weaker and weaker. He suspects that he will die on the very same day, perhaps even the same hour and minute and second, that the future him will be sent back into the past.

He suspects that's how it works, when you fall to a Weeping Angel.

Which is a shame, really. Because they should have had years.

But still, they'd been glorious. For 28 years, they'd shone like shooting stars — well, Sherlock had, really, and John had trailed behind, reflecting and condensing the other man's glory, translating his brilliance for the rest of the world.

They'd saved lives.  They'd saved _uncountable_ lives. And John had won an Edgar Award for his second publication, The Great Game, and he'd been the worldwide bestselling mystery author of 2032. (His writing had really taken off once he'd gotten accustomed to _typing_ , rather than dictating everything via voice recognition, like he'd always done.)

And they'd had each other. Sherlock and John, mind and heart (and body and soul), two halves. Both whole, together. Always together.

In short, it's been a pretty amazing life. Nothing that first John Watson, in the Second Afghan War, could have ever imagined or dreamed; but it's been a bloody amazing life.

As John drifts back to sleep, he has the fleeting thought that that Weeping Angel actually blessed him, by sending him back in time. By giving him Sherlock. By giving him all of this.

 

***********

 

John ascends from a dream, something that would be a nightmare in another man's mind. He is drowning in the River Thames, being swallowed by murky, chemical-tasting waters. It is a memory. The water fills his mouth, fills his nose and eyes and ears. It is like a kiss, like a suffocating kiss; it presses upon him from all sides.

It is not a nightmare, as much as it should be. The pressure of the water, uncountable gallons of it pressing him downward, pushing into his eyes, into his lips, into his chest and arms and thighs... The water is warm, and oddly gentle. He finds it comforting. John tries to stay submerged in the water, arms flailing, legs wildly thrashing, but it fades away. There is nothing solid for him to grasp, nothing to cling onto, nothing to counteract the pull — whatever sound, whatever slight motion in the waking world above, that drags him inexorably to the surface.

His eyes fly open, and turn toward the little glowing bedside clock.

It's 2:37 am.

John feels strange, like something is nagging at him, but he can't quite place the source of his concern.

This time of late night/early morning is not unfamiliar. It hasn't been for a long time, really.

John turns his head to the other side, and notices that Sherlock is not in the bed, not lying alongside him the way he used to do. The other half of their bed is empty, the cover rumpled only by John's movements. Uninhabited.

Uninhabited. For how long, now?

John cannot remember the last time he opened his eyes to find Sherlock lying next to him, the other man's arm stretched across his chest, ridiculously long limbs wrapped around his own. They've slept that way for 29 years, slotted together like a lock and a key. Then, just within this past year, Sherlock has been absent more and more. Has spent more and more time locked away in his lab, the little cottage separate from the main house where he keeps his computers and lasers and robots and chemicals, all of the tools that his butterfly mind needs to pursue whatever interest draws it in.

John cannot remember the last time Sherlock _slept_.

Lying alone in their king-sized bed, his mind drifts back to a scene that keeps returning to his memory, again and again. Somehow, this thought has become a refuge. Somehow, this has become a symbol of Sherlock. Of Sherlock and John, of the way things _should_ be.

The first thing he sees is grey. Everywhere, grey.

Sherlock's hair has not thinned or tamed over the years; it remains the same luxurious, curled mop, but it has faded from its previous black to an all-over, elegant, shining silver. John has watched it happen, strand by strand, the black disappearing, the silver blazing in. Since they retired, almost three years ago, Sherlock has let his hair grow out a bit (because John likes it) and now it hangs down to his chin in elegant, Romanesque curls. The effect is incredibly striking, really quite beautiful and strange, and Sherlock still gets just as many admiring stares at age 58, from men and women alike.

John would be jealous, he really would. His own hair is salt-and-pepper grey, and to make matters worse his hairline is receding, and he can't be arsed to get a follicle transplant. (He's not that vain.)

He'd be jealous, except he already knows that Sherlock treats those looks just like he always has, with bemusement at best, and a more than healthy share of irritation and ire at anyone who becomes persistent, anyone who _assumes_.

He'd be jealous, except he knows that there's no point, because Sherlock is his after 29 years, just as much as he belongs to Sherlock.

These thoughts go through John's mind as they both shave, side by side. He watches Sherlock in the mirror, just as often as he looks at himself. It's an ordinary day; after they eat breakfast and analyse the news, Sherlock will go out to his lab and work on his latest project. In the past decade he's gotten interested in robotics and also in biomimicry. Since they moved to Sussex, he's been working on a design for cheap, mass-produced, swarming surveillance drones, which he thinks can be adapted for military or law enforcement use.

Sherlock has been explaining to him how his drones are based on bees, in the way their tiny cameras can detect pattern and symmetry, can see in ultraviolet, can navigate according to the sun and the earth's magnetic fields. They're even organized like bees: the workers fly out in search of the target, and trail it mercilessly once it is found, recording in many spectra. The drones serve as filters, stripping down the raw data brought back by the workers and snipping out precise segments to be passed on to the queen. And the singular queen, back inside the tiny digital "hive", receives all of the data, correlates and cross-references and interprets it, and finally uploads her findings to the web.

John finds it all quite brilliant, of course. He's tried to develop an analogy wherein Sherlock is the queen bee, while John himself in this scheme would be a worker. When he tells this to Sherlock, though, the man gets all offended, and huffs. "Don't be ridiculous, John, I don't just passively sit and analyze data. And besides, it's the drones that mate with the queen, not the workers." John says nothing, and smiles.

Perhaps it's not one of his better literary devices.

So they are shaving side-by-side, John's rather worn face sharing the sink and mirror with Sherlock's still-smooth one, as they've done almost every morning (barring hospital stays and the occasional abduction) for 29 years. Then, out of the blue, Sherlock's head turns toward John, and he sets his razor down on the tiles of the counter with a precise little snap. Leaning forward, his shoulders suddenly strung with a weird tension, he looks intently at John. Stares, in fact, until John stops shaving and sets down his razor, too.

"What?" He hopes that he doesn't sound defensive. It's obvious that Sherlock wants to speak, is gearing himself up to say _something_. After 29 years, John knows how to read the precise slope of Sherlock's mouth, the angle at which his lips are pressed, the exact degree of tension within the muscles of his cheeks.

"Sherlock? Is everything okay?"

And Sherlock looks at him very seriously, with that pale grey stare — and John's never understood how people could find it that stare cold. Can't they see the fire underneath, the core of molten lava glowing just below the mask? Right below the surface of those pale blue-grey waters that weren't frigid at all, if you just held your breath and dove.

Sherlock stares at him, with that look like fire-below-ice that he has, that he's _always_ had, and John shivers a little bit just at the thought.

He shivers more when Sherlock opens his mouth (he's always loved that voice, and those hands too, and those eyes...) and says, out of nowhere, "John. You cannot die."

When he says this, it's before John is tired all of the time, before all of the tests and scans and specialists and negative results, before John sleeps all day and can't weed the carrots without having to sit down. So when Sherlock says this, John just laughs, and tries to take it as a joke.

"Of course I'm not going to die, Sherlock. I'm only 60, for Chrissake. You've got a good 30 years left before you'll have to pay someone again, to make your tea and fetch the groceries."

Sherlock just stares. "I'm serious, John. You cannot die. While I'm alive, I forbid you to die. I will not allow it to happen." His voice grows deeper and more intense with every word, until at the end he's practically subsonic. Growling. And John really doesn't know what to say, so he just picks up his razor and goes back to shaving, admiring Sherlock's grey curls out of the corner of his eye and waiting for Sherlock to tell him more about the bees.

This is where John's memory ends, with Sherlock telling him that he's not allowed to die.

He supposes that the rest of the day passed by like normal, with Sherlock going out to work in his lab while John answered his emails and wrote and gardened. It had probably been a pleasant day; John doesn't really remember. They're all pleasant days now, looking back.

Before John got so goddamned tired all of the time. Before his body started breaking down.

Before Sherlock locked himself in his lab for days at a time, and stopped sleeping. Before Sherlock stopped talking about his bees. Before Sherlock stopped talking, at all.

It occurs to John that it might have been more than a week since he's actually _seen_ Sherlock. And that thought should be more disturbing than it is, but John is tired again now. Just thinking makes him tired. Just remembering wears him out.

As John drifts back to sleep, something catches his eye, a flicker of movement at the edge of the room. Just there, beneath the window, in the bright pool of moonlight. It's the full moon tonight, John realizes, and for just a second, it looked like something — someone — was standing there, reaching toward John. But when he groggily turns his head to see, everything is still and grey.

He chalks it up to a trick of the moonlight, and lets himself sink back down into dreams.

 

***********

 

John descends into a dream, something that would be a nightmare in another man's mind. Something that would be a nightmare in _anyone's_ mind, except that he's so very used to it, this particular dream. After all of these years, familiarity wears even a nightmare thin, blunting the sharp edges of fear.

John is drowning in the surface of the world, the ground breaking away and crumbling beneath his feet. It is a memory. John is not falling into the ground, he's falling _through_ the ground. What awaits him at the bottom of this tunnel is not rock. He is falling through the surface of the world, through the surface of the universe, through the surface of _time_. Endlessly falling. Into the vortex, into the black void.

Nothing fills his mouth. Nothing fills his eyes and ears. Nothing is like a kiss, like a hollowing, cleansing kiss; nothing empties him out from the inside, spilling his guts, spilling blood and fat and viscera. Spilling memory and thought and personality and fate. Spilling out everything that made him who he is. Spilling _John Watson_. Spilling _Sherlock Holmes_.

It is not a nightmare, even though it should be. This dream is too familiar for that. In a way, John finds it comforting, being stripped down to his bones. Like Inanna he descends, shedding pieces of his soul, as time fragments and twists around him.

John does not try to hold on, does not try to force himself back into linear time. He has learned the futility of linear time, has learned, after all of these years, that in this dream there is nothing to do but _accept_. Just accept the falling and the stripping away, accept the fracturing, accept the void.

Accept it all, or go insane.

There is no angel here to save him, no one to grab him by the arm and pull him out. Above all, he must not search for anything solid to grasp, anything to cling to. There is nothing that can counteract this pull that drags him inexorably downward.

John hits bottom, and his eyes fly open. He turns toward the little glowing bedside clock.

It's 2:37 am.

He frowns.

Something is very, very wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References in this chapter:
> 
> [Moore's Law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law)   
> [The Edgar Awards](http://www.theedgars.com/)   
> [Biomimicry](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomimicry)   
> [The Descent of Inanna](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inanna#Inanna.27s_descent_to_the_underworld)


	6. The Beginning of the End

The moonlight washes in through the broken door, leaching and bleeding all color away. Sherlock's skin looks as grey as his hair, now; he stands where he's stood since John kicked the door down, leaned against a workbench, his face buried in his hands. The little cottage-turned-lab is unlit and dark; John can barely see him.

"I thought I could control it, John."

John has said nothing to Sherlock so far, fully engaged in trying to catch his breath. Breaking down the door to Sherlock's lab is the most physical exertion he's undertaken in several months.

"Sorry, what?"

Sherlock remains silent, his eyes covered.

Over the years, John has developed a voice that he likes to call his "no, Sherlock, actually listen to me" voice. He employs it now.

"Sherlock. What did you think that you could control?"

Finally he lowers his hands and looks at John. Sherlock is wearing a stiff, frozen expression that John hasn't seen in a very long time. It makes him look much younger, and more unhappy, like the Sherlock that John had met, back in that laboratory at St. Bart's.

"I told you, John. You aren't allowed to die!" The words rush out of him, as if they're something he's been holding in for a long time.

John blinks, and shakes his head from side to side. That feeling of wrongness that has stayed with him since he woke up alone in their bedroom gets even stronger. Something is very off.

John feels disoriented, as if his perception of time is slowing down and speeding up in bursts. It reminds him a little bit of the one and only time he smoked a significant amount of marijuana, while celebrating with friends his acceptance into med school. He didn't like that weird time dilation then, and he likes it even less now.

John has always done better when there's a clear target in front of him, something that he can harm or heal. This pervasive sense of _weirdness_ is something he can't deal with quite so well.

"Sherlock." His voice even harder, veering into drill sergeant territory. John hasn't used that tone in years; he hasn't had to. "Tell me what you did."

"John..." Sherlock's voice trails off as he looks around the lab, unable or unwilling to look John in the eyes. "I thought that I could control it, okay?"

"I thought that I could find a way... What Doctor Hawthorne said, about the problems with your metabolic processes. The way it seems like they are simply breaking down, like the energy is leaving. Like it's just disappearing somewhere, without a trace. Well, I did some research, and I thought that I could figure out a way... Not to fix it, not to reverse the process, I'm not that good. I'm just not smart enough. We don't know enough about the weeping angels. I'm sorry, John. I'm so, so sorry..."

Sherlock trails off for a moment, obviously trying to collect himself. John remains silent, giving him the space he needs. After so many years, they trade off distance and closeness, silence and noise, like two relay runners smoothly passing the baton between them. John came to understand this, long ago.

"I thought that I could figure out a way to replace the energy that you lost. Like refilling a funnel as the water drains out." A tiny, irreverent part of John's writer-mind congratulates Sherlock on his effective use of simile. "It wouldn't fix the issue, but it would be a treatment, it would allow you to recover your energy and strength. And it could be used indefinitely, without any detrimental effects upon your health."

"It was your own history, your story about the weeping angel, that gave me the initial idea. I read though all of that information given to you by the Doctor, records of future weeping angel attacks, descriptions of their behavior and their unique methods of harvesting energy." Sherlock gestures vaguely behind him, and John notices an exceedingly dusty and battered old notebook, lying atop a stack of scientific journals. John hasn't seen that thing in _years._ How did Sherlock even find it?

His attention is pulled back to Sherlock, as the man continues. "I corresponded with a number of experts on cellular biology and metabolic disorders, and I began to develop my solution. I believed that it would be possible to find a way to harvest small amounts of temporal energy — very small amounts, on the order of a few seconds — from a large collection of living organisms. I developed a nanoparticle that, when ingested, would convert that temporal energy into metabolic energy."

"Essentially, I wanted to use a modified version of the same process that damaged your cells to ameliorate the effects of that harm."

John shakes his head, takes a minute to parse through Sherlock's words. Now it's Sherlock's turn to wait and give him time. (That had been a difficult habit to instill; the lesson had taken decades.) "So wait, Sherlock... you were harvesting temporal... fuck! You mean you were sending things back in _time_? Living organisms? Just like the weeping angel did to me? Sherlock!"

"John, it's only a few seconds! It wouldn't have been perceptible at all. Do you have any idea how many living organisms exist in a square meter of soil? The bacteria and fungi alone would have provided enough energy to sustain your life for years. Do you think insects possess a sense of time so exact, that they would notice or care about being sent back a few seconds?"

"I thought that I could make the process harmless, by spreading it around like that. That's what the weeping angels do wrong, you know. They pick out and harvest one victim at a time, which means that the time differential needs to be several decades, at least, in order to generate enough energy to feed them. I thought I could develop a wide-field approach that was much less disruptive."

"...Okay. Okay, Sherlock. You _thought_ that you could. That means something isn't working right. And I still want to know what you mean, that you 'can't control it'."

"I _mean_ I can't control it, John. I couldn't run the experiment without a sentient subject to control the harvesting process, and of course I wasn't going to involve you until I knew that it would work. So I've been testing it on myself."

"Sherlock!" John just has to interrupt.

He's never been able to dissuade Sherlock from using himself as a subject in his own experiments, but it's one of his behaviors that John dislikes most. It always makes him worry, more than any of the other foolish things that Sherlock does. Dying at the hands of a bad guy is one thing; John's always known and accepted that they might go out that way. But dying because of some self-inflicted poison or explosion, some _pointless_ illness or injury — something that John can't defend his friend against. Something that John can't protect Sherlock from.

The thought of it makes John feel helpless, and angry. He opens his mouth to say just that, even though they've had this discussion a million times. But Sherlock holds up his hand, gesturing for silence, and his face looks so very serious and grim that John obeys.

"It was the only alternative, John. I didn't see much risk to myself; at the worst, I would fail to receive any energy from the process, but there was no chance of permanent harm."

"You were wrong." John states it as a fact, not a question.

"Yes. I was. I did not foresee the fact that my body would take the energy in, yet refuse to integrate it into my metabolism. Instead, the energy stays in my body, unassimilated, damaging all of the cells that it touches. Changing them. Mutating them into... something else."

"What do you mean? Like cancer?" John's voice rises. "Oh god, Sherlock, are you saying you've got cancer?"

Sherlock shakes his head, and holds out an arm to John, pushing back his sleeve. John crowds in, and instinctively goes to check on Sherlock's pulse.

He cannot find it. Sherlock's arm is hard, the skin rough like sandpaper to the touch, in a way that living skin should never be. It feels like nothing so much as touching a statue, like Sherlock's arm has somehow turned to stone.

Panicked, John pushes Sherlock's sleeve up as far as it will go on his arm, but he cannot find an end to the weird necrotic tissue. Frantically he reaches up and unbuttons Sherlock's shirt, with trembling hands. Sherlock just stays perfectly still, and watches.

John grows frustrated with the slowness and clumsiness of his fingers. (Once, he could remove Sherlock's shirt in half a second; once, he had frequently done so.) He grabs at the seam and pulls, hard. Buttons go flying. He manages to yank the shirt over enough to finally, _finally_ find the line where hard grey tissue blends into living flesh.

The infection (or whatever it is) stretches up both of Sherlock's arms and into his shoulders, sending grey streaks out onto his chest, down his sides and up his neck. It is obviously spreading inward from his extremities, and by the look of things it soon will reach his heart.

John is afraid to consider the implications. His hands fall to his side and he stumbles backward half a step, looking up at Sherlock, his eyes wide.

That _thing_ is starting to happen now; John's soldier-self is starting to come out. (He still, after all of this time, thinks of it as that. His soldier-self. That part of him that will never lose his training.) He's faced with a friend who's in mortal danger; and he feels his hands stop trembling, his heart start to calm.

Sherlock studies him, and John knows that he knows exactly what's going on. Before John can say anything, he starts to speak again.

"But that's not the worst part, John. What's happening to my body is irrelevant. It's what's happening to my mind, John. I can't keep it under control."

"Sherlock." John's voice is flat, now. Perfectly even. "You keep saying that. _What_ can't you keep under control?"

"The harvesting, John. The energy drain, the time transfer. I tried it on myself because I thought if anyone's mind could direct such forces, mine could. But I was wrong."

"As the infection spreads, my mental control decreases more and more. At first I could do it the way that I envisioned, take in energy a little bit at a time, in small quantities, from all of the things around me. But not anymore." Sherlock's voice doesn't change, doesn't tremble or shake, but a little bit of moisture starts to gather at the corners of his eyes.

John has never seen Sherlock cry, not for real; not in 32 years. Only huge, fat crocodile tears, for show. To disarm, or persuade. Nothing like these shy molecules of water that are starting to collect in the lines and creases of the skin around his eyes. "John. It... I can't stop myself from taking more and more. More and more of the energy at one time."

"It's up to hours now, John. I'm taking _hours_ worth of energy at a time, and soon it will be weeks, or months... or years." John sees the pulse jump at Sherlock's throat, just once, a welcome sign of life. It disappears again. "And it is pulled in from wherever my attention is focused. I can't turn it off. I can't direct it anymore..." He trails off.

"John... This is why I've stayed away from you." Sherlock spreads his hands helplessly. "But even that isn't working anymore. I can't help but think about you, and when I do..."

John remembers turning over in their bed, waking from a dream. Looking over at the clock. 2:37 am. Feeling that something's deeply wrong. "It's taking from me. It takes... It's taking energy. It's taking my _time_. Jesus, Sherlock! You..."

Sherlock cuts him off. "John." There is a note of anguish in his voice that John has never heard before.

"I have to get away from you. It's your only chance. As the energy continues spreading through my body, I'm only going to lose more and more control, until eventually I'll be gone completely. I'll be alive, possibly alive forever... but I won't be _me_ anymore. And when that happens, I won't even know to save you. I won't be able to protect you anymore. I'll just be drawn to you, and I'll take and take and take."

"Your only chance is to get as far away from me as you can, before that happens."

The weight of what he's saying hits John like a gut-punch. Hits him hard enough to make his soldier-self falter. John closes his eyes. "Sherlock, I... No. No!"

"I'm dying anyways, Sherlock, you know that. If what you say is true... It doesn't matter. I don't care."

"I still want to be with you, Sherlock, until I die. Even if that death comes sooner than it otherwise might, I don't care. As long as I can die in your arms, I don't care."

As he says it, John feels lighter, like a weight has lifted. He knows that he is making the right choice.

"I love you, Sherlock."

He opens his eyes.

Sherlock is gone.

 

******

 

When morning comes, John still hasn't moved. He stands there, hands clenched at his sides, staring at the spot where Sherlock had stood. Where Sherlock had vanished, without a sound. Without a trace.

Finally, a ray of sunlight shines into John's eyes, bright and uncomfortable. He blinks — once, twice, thrice — and unthinkingly goes to check the time. Holds up his arm, glances down at his watch.

John has worn the same watch for 33 years: 2 years in the future, and 31 years in the past. The band is faded and worn, and he never did end up getting those scratches buffed out, but the watch, much like John himself, has soldiered on. John keeps it around because it reminds him of Sherlock, and of those first terrifying days when he'd found himself stuck in the past. Before Martha Jones had saved him. Before Sherlock had brought him home.

In a way, that watch had started this whole thing.

In a way...

John's thoughts skid to a halt, and his jaw drops.

He can stop this from happening.

John can change it all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Changed the category of this fic from gen to slash, because, who am I kidding. Their relationship is really at the heart of it all.
> 
> This fic just keeps sprouting new chapters. Originally I thought this chapter and the last would be one chapter, but then I decided to break it at the end of the time loop.
> 
> But seriously, I think 7 chapters is what we'll end up, which means that the next one will be the last.
> 
> \-------
> 
> And now, it's time for Shameless Self-Promotion!
> 
> I recently posted another fic about the life of Soo Lin Yao. I know she's probably not one of the characters most people come here to read about, and fics about minor characters never get too many hits. But if you like my writing style, or like magical realism or tattoos, or if her portrayal in the Blind Banker pissed you off because you thought they made her far too passive *ahem*, then, I dunno, you might like that fic too. It's [over here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/290469).
> 
> </shameless self-promotion>


	7. The End of the Beginning

The house looks perfectly normal, and that alone makes John suspicious. It sits on a corner lot in a well-planned, cheery neighborhood in a nice suburb of Leeds. There are matching blue curtains in all of the windows, and the bright white paint looks fresh and new. There is absolutely no sign of human habitation.

Nonetheless, this is the address that John was given, after a great amount of persuasion, by Mycroft Holmes. Supposedly, this is the current home of Dr. Martha Jones.

(John's excuse was that Martha had known Sherlock, and John wanted to share with her the news of his death. He was quite sure that Mycroft knew it was an excuse, but still, he'd given John the address in the end. John wonders if Mycroft is losing his touch — but that thought is just too scary to pursue.)

When John rings, the door is answered by a stately woman in her 50s. John can see traces of the younger Martha in her, the Dr. Jones that he knew, 30 years before. New facial lines and creases, the streaks of grey woven into stylish pinned-up hair — these changes do nothing to hide the mischievous sparkle in Dr. Jones' eyes, or the delight that curves the edges of her slightly upturned mouth.

"John Watson!" Her voice has deepened with age, making her sound warmer and more commanding than before. She sweeps John into her arms, into a hug, as if it hasn't been more than 30 years since they saw each other. As if they've been in touch, as if she knows about his life. "I was told that you were coming over, and I was glad! It's so good to see you again, John."

Eventually she lets him go, and John notices a man standing behind her, watching them quietly and with a look of intense interest. He is a black man, looking to be about Martha's age. He has distinguished salt-and-pepper hair, a small and well-kept mustache, and the upright bearing of a soldier. One of his hands is set on Martha's shoulder, as if to provide subtle support.

(John notes rough skin and gun callouses — signs of a man used to working with his hands. More evidence for the impression that this bloke is a soldier. And... My god, noticing that detail makes John miss Sherlock, makes him wonder what else his friend would see, what things he would be able to tell from this man's eyes, from his clothing, from the way he cuts his hair.)

"John, this is my husband and partner, Mickey Smith."

"Mickey. It's a pleasure."

"Please, come inside. Mycroft informed us that you have some news to share."

Following Martha down the hallway, John notices that the walls are empty of pictures or decorations, and there are no coats hung up on the coatrack by the door. The floor is scrupulously clean, without a hint of dirt or dust. He cannot find it in himself to believe that this couple lives here, but he feels no urge to question the charade.

It is unimportant.

At the kitchen table, they sit down, and Mickey hands around cups of tea that have already been prepared. The tea is at the perfect temperature, and John's is done up exactly how he likes it.

All of this is unimportant.

John leans slightly into the table, as if seeking support. He sets his cup of tea down, careful not to splash or scuff the pristine surface. He folds his hands carefully in front of him, taking care to arrange each finger just so, interlocking, and settles his feet into position against the legs of his chair.

Once he is arranged to his liking, John takes a deep breath, and looks up at Martha and Mickey. "I need you to tell me _everything_ that you know about the Weeping Angels." And then, as much as he doesn't want to hear — as much as John wants to close his ears and turn away, just curl up on his side and die in peace — he listens.

He listens carefully, taking mental notes, while Martha details future atrocities. Families broken apart when half of the members are sent back into the past. Whole civilizations thrown into chaos, planets brought entirely to ruin. People killed outright so that the angels could use their voices, their bodies, to communicate with their inevitable victims.

All of this will happen, in the future. The angels will increase in number, and they will spread across the galaxy. Across _galaxies_. And they will take and take and take, leaving chaos and destruction everywhere they go. Over the millennia, their death toll will reach into the millions.

Millions of lives lost, and Sherlock is the first. Because of him, because of John. Sherlock is the first.

When Martha finishes, John sits for a moment more, considering her words. Then he carefully unlaces his fingers, index middle ring pinkie thumb, and sets both of his feet back firmly on the floor. He takes a deep breath and straightens his spine. Then he looks up at Martha, and says, "I need your help."

"I need you to send me to Afghanistan."

 

*******************

 

Throughout all of his weeks of preparation, of mapping out every path that this conversation might take, and how he should react and what he should do afterwards, John never once imagined this. It simply never crossed his mind that Martha might say no, that she might flat-out refuse to help him execute his plan.

"I'm sorry, John," she leans forward earnestly, "I really am. But what you're trying to do, it's far too dangerous. You can't mess around with the timeline like that."

"It's the same reason why you always had to avoid yourself, when both of you were in London. We have no way of knowing what kind of damage this might do to the fabric of the universe. It might crack time open, send us all into the Void. It might bring down the Reapers, to wipe the planet clean."

"If the Doctor was around, he could tell us whether it was safe or not. Whether Sherlock's... transformation is a fixed point or not. But the Doctor stopped taking my calls decades ago; I don't even know what he looks like, anymore. I don't have any way to contact him now."

"I understand what you're trying to do, John, I really do, and it's admirable. But I'm afraid that I simply cannot help." She delivers the words with proper precision, giving each syllable great emphasis, as if to implant it deep inside John's mind. As if to persuade him.

John stares. His hands tighten into fists beneath the table. He has no words. All of his reasons have been given, and rejected. There is nothing more that he can do.

There is nothing he can do, and Sherlock is gone, gone...

He presses his lips together tightly. He still owes his life to Martha, and antagonizing her will not help Sherlock, even though a part of him longs to heap abuse upon her head. Instead, John nods stiffly, gathers up his cane, and limps down the short hallway without making another sound.

Inside, his head is ringing. Gone, gone, gone... He might as well just lay down and wait to die. All gone. There is nothing he can do, there is nothing... There is nothing...

John is halfway down the sidewalk when he hears a voice softly calling out his name. He stops, gathers himself up. Turns around.

There behind him in the garden is Martha's husband Mickey, beckoning John over. When he approaches, Mickey puts his hand down on John's shoulder, much in the way that he supported Martha at the door.

"John." Mickey pauses, ducks his head a little. Almost like he's embarrassed, or trying to be secretive.

The man gets right to the point. "I'm sorry that Martha won't help you. But I will."

John looks up, surprised.

"Trust me, mate, one soldier to another — I understand."

"Martha's too rational; she's the one who can always walk away. Ever since I've known her, she's always been able to walk away, from anything. I mean, we've been married for two decades, I _know_ that she loves me; and if I died today, she would keep going, just like she always has."

The words are delivered without any trace of judgment or disapproval. Mickey sounds almost admiring. He continues, "I've seen some bad shit, mate, and I suspect that you have too. But Martha... Martha's seen more of Hell than anyone."

"She walked through every country on the planet, being hunted... I don't even know the half of it, but some of the stories that she told me turned _my_ stomach, and I've been fighting bad guys for a _really_ long time. The kind of things she's seen — that can't _help_ but change you."

"Most people who've been through what Martha's been through would be either dead or crazy. But Martha walked away, and then she just kept going. Sometimes I think that she's the best soldier of us all." Mickey grins incongruously and claps John on the back, hard enough to almost make him stumble. "But that's the thing with you doctors, eh, mate? You'll do just about anything to save or protect a life."

John nods slightly, uncertain how to respond.

"Anyway, she doesn't really understand what it means to _need_ another person that deeply. She just... She just _can't_. She physically _can't_."

"But me... I get where you're coming from, mate. I understand what it's like to want to change the universe — to want to change universes, to be with someone that you love." Mickey's voice has gotten softer and more intense, his eyes faraway. As if he is remembering. "Yeah, believe me; I know what that's like."

"So you'll help me get to Afghanistan?" John asks. Another time, he would be curious about this insight into Martha's background. (She was _hunted?_ ) Would want to find out more.

Right now, none of that matters.

"Yeah mate, I can get you over there, and help you get a gun. I can't do anything more, though, not and keep this under wraps. Once you get over there, you're on your own. The final decision will be up to you."

John nods, brusquely. "Thank you. But... there's no decision needing to be made. I've already decided. I know exactly what I need to do."

Mickey looks at him for a moment, starts to open his mouth, and then closes it again. He reiterates, "I'll get you over there. But your decisions, and the actions that you take... those are all on you."

"Just... make sure that you choose wisely. We'll all have to live with it, whichever way you choose."

 

*******************

 

 **4 Months Later**

All that John can hear is the whistling of the wind as it winds its way around the fallen rocks. Dusk has fallen, and far in the east the first stars are coming out, bright and almost painfully sharp.

For a second John imagines that the land itself is singing to him. Yes, if this part of Afghanistan could sing it would sound something like that, all high and wailing and thin, barely three notes in dissonant harmony. Life barely hanging on amongst the cliffs and rocks. The voice of the desert, crying out...

Crying out that this is the place where life begins, and ends. The navel of the world. (There's a word for that — _omphalos_.) This place is the center, the point around which all things will or will not change. Around which things changed long ago, or are about to change.

John listens to the singing, and he watches himself hide.

He thought that he remembered this night very well; it was, after all, the setting of a life-altering event. But now that he is back here, he finds that over time, his brain construed many of the minor details wrong. The moonlight and the stars are fainter than he remembers, the air is warmer and the wind less strong; the shapes and shadows of the ruins are smaller. The cave in which younger John is hiding is merely a hollowed-out pocket in the rock. (In his memory, it has grown into a vast and gaping cavern.)

John can feel the stimulants he's taken coursing through his veins, sharpening his mind, steadying his hands. He holds a gun, and it feels safe and familiar. Almost warm, like the hand of an old friend. (This is not _his_ gun, of course. It's the one that Mickey arranged for him. John owes that man a lot.)

Here, so close to the end, John cannot afford weakness. Though his body might be running down, unwinding like a broken watch, he cannot afford to rest just yet. First, John must complete his task.

John watches himself hiding, and then he sees himself seeing. Without pausing, without thinking, John turns his head to see a grey form, like a man-shaped statue.

Oh god. Oh god, oh god... _Sherlock_.

John's heart thumps painfully in his chest. He knew that this would happen, of course; has done his best to prepare himself to meet the thing that Sherlock has become. But here, face to face with five minutes remaining, his choice becomes _real_.

Before now, it has all been academic. John's plan, born on a desperate morning in a cottage in Sussex, almost a year ago and half a world away: Find a gun. Find himself. And stop himself from getting sent back. Stop himself, by any means necessary.

Now John is here, and it is real.

He raises the gun, and his hands start to tremble. He breathes out, and forces them to still. With practiced movements, he lifts the barrel, aims, and sights. Target as clear as if it were marked out with a laser. Held within the center of the crosshairs.

A shot dead-center, right between his own young eyes.

John knows that he cannot harm a weeping angel. There is nothing in the known universe that can harm Sherlock, even if John _could_. (Could bring himself to take up arms against the thing that had been his friend — had once run alongside him, like two halves of the same mind.) Sherlock is effectively immortal, unstoppable.

But John can stop _himself_. He can aim and pull and fire, and let himself bleed out, life force leaving him faster than the angel can drink. With one shot, all of that fine bright energy spilling out of the new cracks in his skull, leaving his body along with his blood, blackening and darkening these pale white rocks.

(John wonders if this would be considered murder, under the law, or merely a complex form of suicide.)

If he kills his younger self, he will never get sent back into the past by Sherlock. Which means that he will never _meet_ Sherlock, never sit while Sherlock examines his watch. Never dash with Sherlock through the streets of London, or jump with him from rooftop to rooftop.

They will never be together. He will never have loved Sherlock, and Sherlock will never have loved him back. They will never become two halves of the same mind.

(Faintest glimmer of a long-ago discussion:

"Brains and brawn, Sherlock. You're the brains, and I'm the brawn. The muscle."

Sherlock had frowned, and said, "But John, I'm almost as effective at violence as you are. And you are occasionally not unintelligent, in your way." His friend had fallen silent, and John had thought that they were done.

He'd gone back to reading, when Sherlock suddenly continued, "Brains and heart, John. I think that's more accurate. I'm the brains, and you're the heart."

John hadn't been able to argue against that.

Then, of course, Sherlock had added, "That's metaphorical language, which I thought that you might appreciate. It would be truer and more accurate, if less socially acceptable, to say that you're the amygdala and I'm the cerebral cortex." John had rolled his eyes, and kept on reading.)

Because he never knew him, Sherlock will never decide that John cannot be allowed to die. He will never start to experiment, never do the things that have led them to this place.

And the weeping angels will never be unleashed, like a plague upon all sentient life.

Just one squeeze of John's finger, one tiny bit of pressure, and all of this will end. None of it will be; none of it _will have ever been_. It will all be deleted, erased.

John remembers another time when he stared down the barrel of a gun, and made a life-changing decision. That one had been easier; already he was loyal to his strange new flatmate, already willing to risk himself, to ensure that this man's brilliance was not lost.

John will not be there, now.

He realizes, suddenly, that he will not have been there to risk himself for Sherlock, to shoot the cabbie on that night. He will not be sent back, and his absence will _change_ things. Sherlock might swallow the pill, might swallow the _wrong_ pill. Might die. Right there, in that locked-up building, Sherlock Holmes might die.

If not there, then at the planetarium instead; or at the pool, or the museum, or the sewers, or the Thames; or in France, or in Tunisia, or in Liechtenstein. Or just sprawled out on a couch in 221B Baker Street, slowly going insane from ennui and nicotine and the sheer isolation of a brilliant, damaged mind.

John won't have been there, any of those times. Won't be there to hold the gun, to be brave, to provide backup.

Sherlock won't have any _backup_. And the odds are very, very good that he will die, well before he moves to Sussex. Well before his prime.

And because Sherlock is dead, other people will die. The people that they saved directly will die, but also people that they never knew or touched. People that John and Sherlock saved by stopping some criminal, before he could find another target.

Either way, people will die. Blood is on his hands, no matter which way John decides.

Pull the trigger, shoot himself in the head, and Sherlock never becomes an abomination.

Pull the trigger, and the universe never knows the weeping angels.

Pull the trigger, and John deletes himself, along with everything that he knows and loves. Everything he's seen, everything he's experienced since the age of thirty. All of the glory, all of the love — just _deleted_.

Or, he could drop the gun. Drop the gun and let it happen; let Sherlock kill him by sending his younger self back in time. They could have their life together, all the glory, all the love — and then would come the time of angels. Millions of deaths, following on.

Drop the gun and Sherlock lives, and they end up back here in thirty-three years. Pull the trigger and Sherlock dies, young but still human, and the universe is saved.

A lifetime of love, versus millions of lives. It's all up to John, right now.

Right now.

 

He squeezes his eyes shut, and decides.


	8. Epilogue & Meta

The universe divides.

Three universes hang together, for a moment overlapping, sharing the same timeline. Three John Watsons for a moment stand united, shoulders equally square, hands equally practiced and firm.

Then, they start to diverge.

In two of the three universes, John Watson pulls the trigger, and a bullet strikes John Watson right between the eyes, and he dies.

One of these universes quickly becomes unstable. The fabric of spacetime cracks and buckles under the weight of a shockwave that lashes out from Bamyan Province, Afghanistan, to tear open the fabric of existence itself. It takes only a few minutes for everything in this universe to be ripped apart completely, and to fall down into the Void that waits underneath time. The Void that sits beneath _all_ universes; the Void into which John once fell, in his dreams.

That universe is gone, then.

Now there are only two.

In the first stable universe, John fires, and falls down dead upon the ground — both of him, at exactly the same time. And then this universe reels in and rewinds, and reforms itself into a new configuration. A whole new timeline, completely different. A new equilibrium, in which many things are changed.

This universe still contains someone named John Watson, but he is a very, very different man.

In the second stable universe, John lets his fingers go slack, and drops the gun. It falls loosely from his hand, making a dull thud when the barrel strikes the sand. He looks up to see a blur of grey; himself, being attacked by the weeping angel. At the same moment, he falls down upon the ground, and his last thought and the last word that leaves his mouth is, "Sherlock — ".

That universe keeps chugging along smoothly, time unrolling along the same well-worn tracks. Its history records the legends of a man named Sherlock Holmes, who had a very close friend named John Watson. Together they solved crimes, and eventually found love.

 

*********

 

In the first universe, sometime further in the future than John could imagine, there is a family of beings — a mother, a father, and two kids. Their race is called the Eliaadar. They are on vacation on Nemestali Prime, a planet known for its famous historical ruins.

They have a wonderful time exploring the historical sites, roaming freely over the surface of the single small continent. They all agree that they've learned a lot, although the food back at the hotel leaves something to be desired. The ruins give insight into the foundations of their culture, and it is a blessing that they have been kept so well-preserved.

When that family leaves Nemestali Prime to return to work and schooling, the father is still alive. The son will never know the horror of hearing _something else_ speak in his father's voice, using his father's mouth. The mother will never have a crippling, lifelong terror of videoscreens and printed images. And the eldest daughter is still firmly in possession of her mind. (Later she will grow up to become an important diplomat, and negotiate the treaty that finally ends a galaxy-wide war.)

Their life is generally happy; they never really think to feel unsafe.

 

*********

 

In the second universe, somewhere in London in the 21st century, there is a woman making her way home. It's late at night, and she is cold and a little bit inebriated, but she didn't want to spend the money on a cab. By the time she gets into her neighborhood she's shivering and dizzy, but she makes it safely to her apartment and gratefully gets inside.

She will never know what the barrel of a gun feels like when it's pressed into the small of her back; she will never really understand what it's like to have no control over what happens to her body. She will never suffer a flashback, or have to take medication for PTSD. Never watch someone be tortured before her eyes.

Her life is generally happy; she will never really think to feel unsafe.

(When she finishes college, she will rise through the ranks to become an important diplomat, and negotiate the treaty that ends the Second Uzbek War.)

 

*********

 

Both of these universes will keep on splitting, cracking along the fault lines of significant events. Sometimes an instance will go unstable, and be pruned. There will be four universes, and then seven, and then ten.

Between these groups of universes, one fundamental difference will always remain: the presence or absence of two particular people, in a given span of time, in 21st century London. Two halves of the same mind — brain and heart. John Watson and Sherlock Holmes.

For better or for worse, it changes _everything_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finished a multi-chapter fic! I finished a multi-chapter fic! *raises a glass in celebration*
> 
> \-------
> 
> It occurs to me that the second universe, where John drops the gun, could be seen as the universe in which both Sherlock and Dr. Who are set. The universe that has Holmes and Watson, and Weeping Angels.
> 
> Meanwhile, the first universe, where John pulls the trigger and undoes time, could be our own.
> 
> I leave you with that thought.


End file.
